Libby won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1960, for introducing a dating methodology using radioactive carbon-14, a long-lived, natural beta-emitting radioisotope emitted in minute quantities by all living things.

I can get much of the gist without delving into the deepest details or formulas. In fact after you get through the intro on radioactive waves from outerspace soaking into our bodies and slowly decaying over 5730 years you will realize there are some serious mathematical flaws.